


Things That I'm Not

by brawltogethernow



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: (he was already a ghost but you know the bedsheet kind), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Artificial Intelligence, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Duel Monsters, Gen, Magic? In MY Solid Vision Holograms? It's More Likely Than You Think!, Possession, Vignette Set, Youkai, Yugi's superpower is rolling with it, antiques with extensive personality, any canon except this Kaiba isn’t skeptical enough to be dub, quoth Kaiba: DUEL ME DUEL ME DUEL ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 07:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15019649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: Five things Atem wasn't.





	Things That I'm Not

**An Actual Split Personality**

Yugi did notice some things about his other self.

That his appearances were more frequent when he was stressed. That he’d experienced similar things before, just never so extreme.

Yugi kicked a cassette player off his bed (it landed unharmed on a pile of dirty laundry) to make more room for his feet. _You’re not real, are you_ , he thought at the other him.

‘I don’t think so,’ said the figment in question, sounding kind of sad about it.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” said Yugi. It was a conclusion he’d been coming up on for a while, ever since he’d put together what went on during his blackouts, but hadn’t really wanted to think about.

‘Probably not.’ Now he sounded concerned about Yugi’s well-being.

Yugi flopped down on the bed, unsure what to say to that.

“But I like having you around!” Yugi said eventually. “Is that unhealthy? Do I need to get over it?”

‘Well, you definitely shouldn’t be looking to _me_ for answers,’ Yugi’s other self laughed. He was everything Yugi wasn’t, but maybe could be, if he could just — well, overcome his entire personality. Smooth, confident. Good with people. Sort of. There was probably an alternative to being stomped on by other people that wasn’t stomping right over them yourself.

“Ugh.” Yugi rolled over on his bed and buried his face in his pillow. “What if this is just how my brain is wired? Would it be okay to talk to you then? I mean, if I _know_ you’re not real? Or am I just making excuses?”

‘Have you looked this up?’

“I don’t know where to _start,_ ” groaned Yugi.

The other him sounded fondly amused when he suggested, ‘The library?’

“I could. Or I could —”

‘Watching _Fight Club_ for the second time is _not_ research.’

Yugi huffed. “What kind of elaborate coping mechanism _are_ you?”

 

** ~~An AI That Grew Beyond Its Programming?~~ The Same Pharaoh's Ghost, Possessing a Hologram  
**

The testing room was completely deserted. Kaiba had made sure of it. The technicians and scientists who usually manned various stations had gone home for the day. He had slipped away from Mokuba. No investors or crowd had been invited. He stood alone, but for his deck and the glass eyes of his own technology which dotted the echoing room.

“You’re not an AI,” Kaiba said. “I didn’t tell you to do this. What are you?”

It flickered into view at his call, and he was no longer alone.

This hologram was _supposed_ to be a perfect facsimile of the famous duelist, Yugi Mutou. Kaiba had netted the signatures of the top couple dozen most notorious duelists after his last tournament, and in exchange for a hefty sum had secured the rights to their likenesses and personalities for use in gaming simulators, theme parks, and the like. (There had been a modestly-sized pincher movement of a letter-writing campaign and petition after the launch insisting he include Katsuya Jounouchi, but he would literally rather jump out his twenty-seventh story office window, so he had ignored it.)

But anybody with _eyes_ could see that Yugi’s digital likeness looked a bit wrong. Was it _Kaiba’s_ fault that most of the plebians who interacted with it lacked eyes? Duelists should know how to assess a facial expression _and_ know better than to think any Kaiba Corp technology that had passed alpha testing would get something like that wrong.

“How the hell should I know?” it demanded right back.

And there was that. It didn’t act a thing like Yugi Mutou. You couldn’t say Mutou lacked presence _,_ but he was... _mild mannered._

But whatever it was, this... _other_ Yugi...its game _was_ just as good as the flesh and blood one’s, so...

“Duel me,” said Kaiba, his always thin patience running out and prompting him to skip to the real reason he’d come here. “If you want me to believe you’re real —”

“I didn’t say I wanted anything from you,” it grumbled sourly.

“ _If_ you want me to believe you’re real,” Kaiba continued, ignoring both the projection’s words and that he was already sure of his conclusions about the thing “— then show me your heart in a game!”

The aberration that had appeared in Kaiba’s own programming smirked. “Very well, then.” Its eyes narrowed, and Kaiba found himself waiting with bated breath for the catch phrase the phenomenon sometimes threw out. (Yugi Mutou did not have a catch phrase.) “It’s game time!”

 

**A Haunting**

“So you’re telling me,” Jounouchi said.

“Yep,” said Yugi.

“Somebody _died_ in your game shop?!”

“Yeah.”

“ _Recently?_ ”

“Well, not _that_ recently. I mean, it wasn’t a game shop yet.”

“ _Eurghuh,_ ” said Jounouchi, shuddering all over. “Haunted house...”

“Er, you should know,” said Yugi, sounding apologetic. “He kinda. Doesn’t remember who he was?”

“Oooo-kay?”

“So he doesn’t remember what he looked like,” Yugi continued earnestly. “So normally he just decides to look like me. We’re not sure he was a guy at all, actually, he just says he thinks so? Anyway — I thought you should know beforehand. He’s not actually related to me or anything. I mean, probably.”

A bead of actual sweat ran down the side of Jounouchi’s face. “Okay, that’s weird but I can deal. It’s just...”

They walked in silence for a few seconds as Yugi waited expectantly and Jounouchi made faces.

“It’s just...ghosts, really?”

Jounouchi made another face, a very unflattering pained grimace that should have communicated nothing but clearly conveyed, _I don’t want anything to do with this._

“Come on, he’s not so bad!” laughed Yugi, and tugged Jounouchi along to meet his ghost.

 

They kicked off their shoes at the door, greeted Grandpa Mutou, and tromped up to Yugi’s room, where Yugi introduced his weirdest friend to his best friend with a flourish.

“Yeah,” I can’t see him,” Jounouchi said, gesturing to what he hoped was the right spot in the empty air. Jounouchi was a great friend, and did not for a second consider that Yugi was just insane, or messing around.

“What, but he’s right there!” protested Yugi.

 _Hang on,_ said Yugi’s ghost, who had been watching Jounouchi with the idle attention of a cat. _I think I have an idea. If you don’t mind..._

And he stepped into Yugi, and blinked their eyes.

Jounouchi yelped and scuttled back. Though a tried and true soul, he would never be the ideal first responder for things like people’s eyes suddenly flashing bloody red. Or their hair wiggling around like they were having a static problem. Or something that might have been —

Yeah, that was definitely a glowing third eye.

Yugi’s ghost ran Yugi’s tongue experimentally over Yugi’s teeth. “Hello, Jounouchi-kun,” he said carefully.

Jounouchi’s furious mental calculations (How do you fight a ghost possessing your friend? If it was Honda he’d have just tried to punch the ghost out but it was Yugi, who was not a punching friend) were brought up short by the amicable greeting. He rallied, compromised on an internal debate of whether or not to raise his fists by raising only _one_ fist, and said, menacingly, “ _Oi._ ”

“Wait, I’m okay!” Yugi hastily jumped back into prominence to reassure Jounouchi. The ghost was forcibly relocated several feet behind Yugi and made a surprised _oof_ sound, and the spooky effects turned off like they had a switch.

“Your _eyes were glowing_ ,” said Jounouchi, unsure if Yugi knew this. ~~~~

“Yeah, we’ll warn you next time,” said Yugi, who this was indeed news to, but was willing to roll with it to help a roommate, uninvited and spectral though he was.

 

**A Tsukumogami**

The Spirit of the Puzzle manifested wearing said jewelry on a rope around his neck. This proclivity was awkward, sometimes, since Yugi liked to carry the Puzzle around with him. When the spirit appeared with too little warning — which, being an ebullient sort of character, he was wont to do — _somebody_ usually went flying. Often they would both go toppling over on top of each other. (This had somehow failed to so much as chip at the spirit’s dignity.) It was especially regrettable when Yugi was already wearing the Puzzle around his own neck — though after being unintentionally strangled two or three times, he’d started mostly wearing it on his hip.

But Yugi was home now, so the Puzzle had been sitting on his desk. And now the spirit was.

The spirit looked about like you’d expect from the manifestation of an ancient gold necklace. He had skin cast of gold, and hair of wire zig-zagging from his head in a wild crown. He was like a statue, only able to move instead of merely possessing the illusion of life. He wore cloth of gold in an ancient style from the Puzzle’s homeland. One that didn’t, in the balance of things, require much fabric, but he was crusted head to toe in gold jewelry, which more than made up for the actual cloth’s scant covering. It was all finished off with a wine-purple cape, the only thing staving off complete monochrome.

Lately he’d also been adding on modern jewelry that Yugi gave him. It looked a little ridiculous, patched in on the few places he hadn’t already had something, but the black belts on his biceps, plastic anklets, and friendship bracelets seemed to delight him.

His eyes, of course, were the same as the one carved into the side of the puzzle. The right one had the curl and line coming down from it like a heavily stylized representation of eyeliner, and the left did not. Yugi had found it creepy when they first met, but had told himself to pretend the Spirit was wearing goggles, which had made it seem less unsettling. The spirit’s eyes didn’t emote except to catch the light and shadow just so when he tilted his head, so it was functionally true.

An uninformed observer might question whether Yugi had any _reason_ to want to find the spirit less unnerving, but he had been painfully, _crushingly_ lonely before meeting the youkai-sort-of-thing he now considered a dear friend. And the puzzle spirit _loved_ games, which had given them something to bond over. He was good at them, too, for of course his mind was like the Puzzle — tricky and mazelike and brilliant.

Like you’d expect from someone who was a tricky game, himself.

“Hello, Spirit,” said Yugi, who was playing with a puzzle — a normal one, from a corner store — on his desk. “It’s good to see you! Did you want anything?”

The spirit loomed over Yugi — though only because he was standing on a desk and Yugi was both sitting and possessed of absolutely terrible posture. The spirit was very short, like a scaled-down figure of a human. _Your game just looked interesting,_ he said. _Can I help?_

“Sure!” said Yugi brightly, leaning out of the way to let the spirit see better. Yugi loved sharing games with people as much as he loved games themselves.

So they were a lucky match, really.

 

**Just a Guy**

Tarou was taking a shortcut through an alley at a slink when he spotted him. That _damn punk_ from yesterday. He was dressed differently today, in a school uniform even though it wasn’t school hours or even close, but only the blind could ever mistake that hair.

“Hey, you!” he shouted. “You messed up my gang! And now I’m gonna mess _you_ up!”

The other boy turned around, expression utterly blank. “What?” he said, sounding stunned, voice weirdly light and nonthreatening compared to how it had been yesterday. Had Tarou caught the guy during what he thought of as off hours? _Ha._ He’d show him how smart it was to let your guard down after messing with the Sceptre Gang.

“Don’t play dumb!” Tarou snarled, grabbing the front of the guy’s shirt and lifting him up into the air by it. He weighed almost nothing. “You thought that stupid game you set up was going to keep us down forever or something? Or did you just think not dressing like a nutcase makes you unrecognizable?”

 _Finally,_ those huge eyes widened in recognition. “Oh! You must mean —”

Behind Tarou there was a soft _tamp_ of footsteps, like somebody had jumped into the alley and landed on both feet.

“— My twin brother?”

Tarou turned halfway around, wary of a ‘made you look’ trick, and —

Shit.

 _That_ was the damn punk from yesterday. He was dressed in all black still, with a lot of silver chain detailing and like six mismatched armbands.

“I believe it’s _me_ you have the problem with,” he said, grinning, sharp and feral and how did Tarou ever think this other kid was him?

“Please be nice, nii-san,” said — the punk’s wimpy brother. Who had slipped free of Tarou’s slackened grip and was...edging away. Uh oh.

“I hope you don’t mind, Yugi...” purred the tiny maniac.

The brother shrugged, still standing around like a sack of potatoes — or like somebody who thought they had no reason to be afraid of either of them. “You know if you don’t set anybody on fire I’m cool with it.”

“That’s not funny,” croaked Tarou.

“Who’s joking?” said the punk. “ _Heh._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these AUs were following me around. Noticing they shared a basic theme, I decided to collect them like this, plus a couple more to round out the set, to 1) deplete my Brobdingnagian 'Get to Someday' pile a little by skimming off low-priority concepts and 2) kick them out into an existence beyond my head whether or not I ever finish any more substantial fics with the same themes.
> 
> Inhabiting-a-hologram Atem in particular is an idea I'm attached to and convinced is compatible with the canon magic system. Blah blah blah in the _Book of the Dead_ blah blah in this essay I will.
> 
> Even I'm not sure if the 27th story line is a reference to Kaiba's cavalier grip on his own life or to how he's Seto Fucking Kaiba and chances are if he did leave a skyscraper that way he would somehow be fine. Probably while improbably holding a briefcase.
> 
> [Tsukumogami.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami)
> 
> Before Atem (not his name in that universe) got his hands on them, the Sceptre Gang were a tight-knit group of bullies with a gimmick centered around the "sept" sound. (Sept and sceptre lose pronunciation differences if ported to Japanese.) There were seven (sept) of them; they all have septum piercings. Very cute, except they also had "sceptres" that were just weighted billy clubs that they used on property and people, so Atem took it upon himself to turn those against them in an ironically karmic way. Probably talked them into an oversized game of pick-up sticks/Mikado with them but like, their configuration is also barely suspending some physical trauma that'll get you if you fumble one badly enough. I accidentally figured all this out typing the single related line, so now you have to know it too.


End file.
